Haven't tried it yet, I even have some of my machines using 1.4 because 1.6 breaks WoW on that machine...
Anyway as of now, 1.7.4 is in portage. All you need to do is keyword it - since it's in "unstable" - merely add an entry for it in your /etc/portage/packages.keywords and run emerge on it.

Unfortunately as I haven't tried it, I don't know what other dependencies need to built along with it, and those may need to be unmasked as well._________________Intel Core i7 2700K@ 4.1GHz/HD3000 graphics/8GB DDR3/180GB SSDWhat am I supposed watching?

Does wine 1.7.4 in portage has the direct3D patches ? That seem to be a huge improvement on Direct3D for gaming and other applications ...

No, because they are not ready. While they make some things run faster, they break others, and they only apply against version 1.7.1. The patches are, however, slowly creeping into the main tree, but it will be a while until all of that has arrived.

I would recommend using git for this, as it's simply convenient in general, and 1.7.1 doesn't even seem to be in Portage tree any longer._________________Kind Regards,
~ The Noob Unlimited ~